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Twitter used to be one of my favorite social media platforms. It was like a never ending party, and you could always find someone to chat with in 140 characters or less.

Ever so slowly though, the party seemed to dissipate. Nobody was liking or retweeting tweets. Starting a conversation was almost impossible because everybody’s feeds were filled with links and ads. It got harder and harder to interact with such limited space – especially when links and photos take away such a big chunk of those precious 140 characters.

But this week we got good news! Twitter has announced 7 new Twitter features that will hopefully bring the party back. No more cropped photos, and attaching an image won’t be counted against your character count. You can search for GIFS and soon we’ll be able to click a “Go Live” button for Periscope!

You can check out all the changes here: http://bit.ly/1ONnAat. I think I’m most excited about being able to search for GIFS. What’s your favorite new feature?

A new mobile app called Peach is stirring up a lot of excitement in the social media world.

Marketed as a messaging app, Peach allows users to publish messages to friends, as well as friends of friends. Mashable sums up the app as a “mix between Twitter and Slack.”

Like Twitter, users publish a stream of updates. Your latest peach can be a quote of the day or a link to the latest article you read.

Like Slack, this app uses Magic Words, which are commands for a nifty set of features. For instance, type here, and Peach will pin your current location to share with friends. Or type draw, and the app will give you a blank page to scribble and sketch to your heart’s content.

Our personal favorite is song. This magic word identifies the song that you’re listening to, and drops the song’s name into your message box. Sweet!

For a complete list of Magic Words, just type help.

So, as a brand, how can Peach fit into your social media strategy?

The honest answer is that this is still so new, but that’s also why it’s exciting. So, for now, download the app and register the username for your brand. Then, pull your team together and start experimenting with Peach through personal or test accounts.

We’ll follow up in a couple weeks with some of our own ideas. Stay tuned!

Last week, Twitter announced that we may be reading longer tweets in the near future. According to ReCode: “Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet things longer than the traditional 140-character limit, and the company is targeting a launch date toward the end of Q1, according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans.”

Without going into too many details because at this point it’s all speculation since Twitter has yet to confirm or deny the change, I wanted to share my thoughts on why upping the character limit may not be a bad idea.

Let me back up and say that Twitter was my my first social media love and when i initially read that ReCode headline, I freaked out. 140 is exactly why I LOVE Twitter! A tweet is short! A tweet isn’t a tweeeeeeeeeeeet!

Okay. That’s only 138 characters, but you get my point. 10,000 characters? I don’t want my feed clogged up with short stories that I have to scroll through. Nobody would want that. I guarantee you that I’d never stick around to read 10,000 words. That’s a novellete! That’s a very, very long blog post! Side Note: I’m also a blogger and keep my posts to 500 – 750 words because readers don’t have a very long attention span when online.

Tweets are supposed to be short, easy to read, and give you just enough information to click over to get more information somewhere else. You’ve got to be creative and thoughtful to grab someone’s attention with just 140 characters.

But guess what? Twitter doesn’t intend for any of us to be scrolling through 10,000 character tweets. After more research on the subject, I found this over at Buffer: As Slate points out: “In all likelihood, the text of tweets themselves will remain capped at 140 characters in most cases… As a result, your Twitter feed will continue to look much the same as it does today. The difference will be that, for certain tweets, you’ll have the option to click or tap a button (“Expand,” perhaps) to view the full article or blog post without leaving your Twitter feed.”

So nothing is really going to change. Just like when they introduced video embedding and Twitter cards and changes to how we retweet. Nothing changed then, and nothing will be changing now. All that this is going to do is give people the opportunity to share more if they want, but you can just scroll right past those first 140 characters if you’re not interested.

If it’s in fact true that my feed will continue to look just as it always has, this big but inconsequential change won’t affect my love for Twitter.